from the out-of-139-total-bullets-fired dept

In 2012, Cleveland police officers engaged in perhaps the most one-sided "shootout" ever with two suspects at the tail end of an (unauthorized) police chase. By the time it was over, officers had fired 139 bullets into a vehicle they had trapped in a school parking lot. Twenty-three of those hit the driver. Twenty-four hit the passenger. Both vehicle occupants were killed.

One officer -- Michael Brelo -- apparently thought he was starring in his own action film. He unloaded 49 rounds in just over 20 seconds while standing on the hood of the stopped vehicle. All told, more than 75 Cleveland PD vehicles joined the chase/shooting. At the end of a yearlong investigation, 63 officers were suspended for their participation. Six officers were charged.

The genesis of the horrific debacle was nothing more than a car backfiring. One cop mistook this for a gunshot and all hell broke loose. No weapons were recovered from the vehicle.

One of the stranger offshoots of the infamous shootings was a lawsuit filed by several Cleveland police officers who took part in the chase. In their view, they were punished more harshly than African American officers who also participated in the unauthorized pursuit.

The officers - eight white officers and one Hispanic - claim the department has a history of treating non-black officers who shoot black residents "more harshly" than black officers involved in shootings, according to the lawsuit…

Apparently, the Cleveland PD shoots enough black residents that a pattern of discrimination can be discerned. And, apparently enough officers walk away unscathed from shootings that the worst thing complained about is longer suspensions, not actual firings or criminal charges.

Unless these nine officers truly believe the Supreme Court of the United States would be willing to hear their arguments (and the insane incident preceding their complaint) rehashed one more time, it's the end of the line for this complaint -- undoubtedly one of the odder post-police shooting civil rights lawsuits ever filed.

After recounting the law enforcement pursuit-turned-firing squad that led to the punishment these officers felt was unfair, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals gets down to business dismissing their arguments. [PDF]

Apparently, after a shooting, involved officers are sent to a place called the "Gymnasium." There they are supposed to recuperate and get their heads together for an eventual return to the force. They are also placed on restricted duty, which prevents them picking up overtime, moonlighting at other jobs, or earning pay for court appearances. Those who have been sent to the Gymnasium refer to it as "stressful" and "demeaning."

Some who find this to be a form of punishment perhaps shouldn't have been punished. Others, like the suspended officers who engaged in a pursuit no supervisor had authorized, also might have felt a trip to the Gymnasium felt like punishment. That's probably because it's supposed to be a punishment.

These officers felt they were unfairly treated, as compared to their African American counterparts who were just as involved in the pursuit and shooting. Unfortunately for them, they failed to provide any evidence of their claims -- at least nothing that held up to two courts' scrutiny.

First, the plaintiffs felt the lower court failed to review their arguments in the light most favorable to them during the city's motion to dismiss. Part of their claims rest on the assertion that the "sound" of a gunshot justified actions taken past that point. The Appeals Court finds that distinction doesn't matter at the summary judgment stage. Not only that, but this assertion was made with no evidence backing it.

In its characterization of the events of November 29, 2015, the district court construed the absence of evidence to the contrary to suggest that Russell and Williams were likely unarmed and that the gunshot-type noise was likely Russell and Williams’ car backfiring. The Plaintiffs have not offered a scintilla of evidence that suggests that the noise was actually a gunshot. They also have not cited any evidence in the record that suggests that Russell and Williams were actually armed. Indeed, the evidence they cite suggests that the investigation revealed no such evidence. Thus, the district court did not err in making these two inferences.

Also offered as evidence by the plaintiffs was a spreadsheet purporting to show the difference in Gymnasium time served by African American officers and those of other races. But the spreadsheet doesn't show what the officers claims it does.

[T]he Plaintiffs claim that the spreadsheet shows that non-African American officers who used deadly force and killed African American suspects spent an average of 239.38 days on restricted duty. However, according to the spreadsheet, that is not true. That average is skewed by the inclusion of dates for which the Plaintiffs were detailed to transitional duty assignments. At oral argument, the Plaintiffs conceded that these dates should not have been included in the calculations.

The plaintiffs also asserted that they were taken off restricted duty temporarily but sent back to the Gymnasium as a result of a "media inquiry," implying that the orders were discriminatory because they were based on outside pressure rather than established policy. The court finds this claim empty as well.

The Plaintiffs have failed to carry their burden on this claim. The same day that the Plaintiffs were ordered to the Gymnasium for a second time, 19 Action News posted an article online about the Plaintiffs’ employment status. The Plaintiffs argue that this shows that McGrath acted based on racial tensions in the community and the media inquiry—not based on a discovered mistake. However, the news article states that it originally reported that the officers had returned to full duty in June, about four months prior McGrath’s order that they return to restricted duty. The article then states that McGrath has now decided that that decision was inappropriate. Accordingly, he ordered the Plaintiffs “off the streets until a county prosecutor decides on any criminal charges.”

Nothing in the article suggests or implies that it was as the result of a media inquiry that McGrath moved the officers to restricted duty; it only reports McGrath’s decision to assign the officers involved in the Russell/Williams shooting to restricted duty. There is also nothing in the article that indicates that McGrath’s decision was based on the Plaintiffs’ race. If anything, the article undermines those arguments. It pointedly states that it had previously reported the Plaintiffs’ status, and it explains that McGrath decided to order the Plaintiffs to be assigned to restricted duty until all investigations were complete.

Summary judgment for the defendants stands. Nothing remains of these officers' arguments than the sense of entitlement they portrayed. The overriding concern coming out of an incident where dozens of officers cornered two unarmed people -- following a chase where orders to disengage either never came or were ignored -- and fired 139 bullets in 30 seconds in their direction is that the punishment they endured (but lived through) seemed unfair.

from the because-not-everything-is-a-Zionist-conspiracy dept

The FBI recently raided a small gas station in Cleveland, Ohio for apparently no other reason than having a controversial mural painted on the wall.

The SWAT team, armed with rifles, handguns, and bulletproof vests, stormed through the store without showing any warrants or answering any questions about why they were there according to the store’s owner, Abe Ayad.

According to Cleveland’s NewsNet5, Ayad demanded to see a warrant from the agents, but they were never able to show him one.

Here's some video of the raid, which apparently concluded (the video, not the raid) when FBI agents shut down the recordings.

*While this sounds entirely despicable, there is a small bit of truth underlying the depiction of a rabbi with his mouth on an infant's penis. Here's a description of the circumcision process, as practiced by some Orthodox members of the Jewish faith. It's short, but says all it needs to say.

Under Jewish law, a mohel must draw blood from the circumcision wound. Most mohels do it by hand with a suction device, but some Orthodox groups use their mouth to draw blood after cutting the foreskin.

Abe Ayad "identifies" as a Muslim, which probably makes him a Muslim (distancing use of "identifies" courtesy of Cleveland.com), which probably explains why so many of his murals target Jews. That these are displayed on the outside of his business sort of makes it a civic issue. In all fairness to the city, it has never demanded a removal of the murals. It has only asked that they be made smaller and thus less visible from the road.

Ayad has refused. And if a man's home is his castle and his licensed business his castle with an ROI, then he should -- for the most part -- be free to decorate it with images others might find offensive. (Obviously, actually obscene images would be another issue altogether.) Those offended are free to tell Ayad he's a racist and a fool and spend their money elsewhere. It's not as though Ayad is the sole provider of anything in Cleveland. But considering the issues at the center of the artwork, the city has responded in a mostly commendable fashion. There seems to be nothing approaching a heckler's veto being humored here.

That's the good news. Here in the US, people are free to display their irrational hatred and ignorance. If Ayad isn't actually committing violence against Jews or imploring others to commit criminal acts, then his artwork is just a two-party wall of shame that should be pitied for its deep-held ignorance, rather than booed off the face of the planet by the offended.

Ayad also claims to have been raided by local police in 2009. He doesn't specifically say it was because of the murals (it's implied) but law enforcement seized money, guns and an apparently very expensive stamp collection. Most of it was subsequently returned.

"They can’t arrest me. For what?” said Ayad. “2009 they raided me too. No charges. They gave me back my guns, they kept my money and then they gave me back my money minus the coin collection, which was valued over $3 million.”

Similar items were seized in the recent raid. But this doesn't have anything to do with the murals, even if Ayad is skewing it in that direction. Cleveland.com has, simultaneously, no details and more details.

FBI spokeswoman Vicki Anderson said agents surrounded and sealed off the East 55th Street gas station about 10 a.m. to execute a warrant.

She would not provide any other details.

Ayad, however, did.

The store's owner, Abe Ayad, said agents were looking for evidence of food stamp fraud and illegal gun sales. Ayad said no such activity has taken place in the business.

Which is not the same thing as being raided for controversial murals. Ayad may believe this is part of a conspiracy to shut down his business and save the city from having to field more mural-related complaints, but it appears the issues at hand in this raid (and the 2009 raid as well) are unrelated to the paintings on the exterior walls.

Now, it may be possible that two raids with six years between them are both a part of a larger plan to disrupt and destroy Ayad's business. It could be Ayad's multiple appearances in court for civil lawsuits are also instrumental to the city's long-term plan to be rid of his murals forever. Or it could simply be that neither of these are related to the artwork, but rather inextricably tied together because the murals on the outside can't be separated from the interior of the business endorsing these viewpoints.

It may be that someone in Cleveland's law enforcement community has it in for Ayad, possibly because of the murals, but there doesn't appear to be a sustained history of harassment. While the city would undoubtedly enjoy a respite from Ayad's "antics" and the complaints that follow them, there's very little here to justify any claims that the FBI raided Ayad's store over the murals. Free speech (mostly) lives here and Ayad's contentious relationship with a great many people has yet to see his store shut down for any reason, legitimate or not.

As for Ayad not being allowed to see the warrant, that's perfectly legal as well. Law enforcement officers are under no obligation to present the warrant before performing searches or seizures. It's simply enough that the warrant exists and is presented to the raided party at some point during the search. A "warrantless raid" -- as this has been portrayed -- means the absence of a warrant, not just that the raided party wasn't presented with a warrant before it commenced. Any number of exigent circumstances exist that allow for the presentation of a warrant after a search/seizure has already commenced. In this case, paperwork was handed over to Ayad at the time of the agents' departure. So, while a bit on the shady side morally-speaking, the entire operation clearly falls within the legal bounds.

I'm all for a "bad cop/censorship" narrative, but one doesn't exist here. I prefer the ones where the official parties have buried themselves, rather than grab a shovel and start hurling dirt when in possession of only a bare minimum of facts. So, score one for the good guys, I guess -- pending any further details that point to the FBI being pointed in the direction of Ayad because (a) he's Muslim and (b) he owns guns.

from the er-okay-then dept

If you're a sports fan, you have probably heard about the spate of players in several leagues sporting shirts or else protesting, via planned actions at the start of games, the recent deaths at the hands of police. Everyone from Derrick Rose and LeBron James in the NBA to several football players have gotten into the act. A few weeks back, in fact, we learned that the police in St. Louis, the area home to the Michael Brown shooting, were quite upset that members of the Rams would dare to voice their support for protesters. That story was insulting enough, but the reaction to Cleveland Browns player Andrew Hawkins' wearing of a shirt that simply read "Justice for Tamir Rice - John Crawford", both of whom also died at the hands of police, is downright insulting.

In response, Jeff Follmer Police Patrolman Union President sent newsnet5 the following statement:

"It's pretty pathetic when athletes think they know the law. They should stick to what they know best on the field. The Cleveland Police protect and serve the Browns stadium and the Browns organization owes us an apology."

If this statement from the President of a police union in a major city doesn't boil you up with anger, read it again. It's pathetic when athletes think they know the law? By implication, it's "pathetic" when ordinary citizens believe they "know" the law under which they are governed? The hubris required to insist that the same people you claim to protect and serve are pathetic for thinking they are aware of the legalities of American life runs at levels I truly didn't even think I'd see directly on display. Of course, there are nuances with the legal profession that escape the average American. That's why we have lawyers. But for the reaction to the police shooting two unarmed people (one of them twelve years old) to be to snicker at the thought that the protester knows "the law" is beyond insulting. It's downright stupid.

And what is with the thinning of skin in America's police force all of the sudden that a little protest returns calls for apologies? Grow up. You don't get to wear body armor, drive around in MRAPs, and have skin the thickness of amoeba membranes.

What this ultimately reveals is that many cities in this country have a huge problem in the disconnect between the police and the people they protect and serve. For the lead dog in a police union to snort at the public for daring to "know the law" in such a manor reveals the larger problem: the respect is only going one way, if any way at all.

from the no-restraint-and-no-accountability dept

The DOJ has just released the conclusions of its civil rights investigation of the Cleveland Police Department [pdf link]. What it's uncovered is sadly unshocking. It's the same sort of behavior that's endemic in law enforcement agencies all over the nation: routine use of excessive force and discriminatory policing.

The Cleveland PD gained recent national notoriety after a police pursuit devolved into a department-wide free-for-all -- a 23-minute chase involving nearly 100 officers and supervisors and over 50 vehicles. The pursuit began when two officers thought they heard a gunshot coming from a vehicle. It concluded in a middle school parking lot, with more than a dozen officers unloading 137 bullets into the stopped vehicle, most of them in a 20-second period. A single officer was responsible for 49 of those bullets, some of which were fired into the two "suspects" from the hood of their vehicle. In all, 47 bullets found their way into the victims' bodies. No weapons or empty casings were found in the vehicle.

The DOJ's report opens with the de rigueur statements about how dangerous policing is and how grateful the nation is that there are men and women willing to do this difficult job. But this is mercifully brief. The token belly rub doesn't even last a full paragraph. The generic praise that makes up the two first sentences is swiftly tempered by these curt sentences.

The use of force by police should be guided by a respect for human life and human dignity, the need to protect public safety, and the duty to protect individuals from unreasonable seizures under the Fourth Amendment. A significant amount of the force used by CDP officers falls short of these standards.

The next page briefly summarizes how the CPD falls short.

The unnecessary and excessive use of deadly force, including shootings and head strikes with impact weapons;

The unnecessary, excessive or retaliatory use of less lethal force including tasers, chemical spray and fists;

Excessive force against persons who are mentally ill or in crisis, including in cases where the officers were called exclusively for a welfare check; and

The employment of poor and dangerous tactics that place officers in situations where avoidable force becomes inevitable and places officers and civilians at unnecessary risk.

That the CPD has shown a pattern of excessive force isn't even open for debate, according to the DOJ. The agency points its fingers at several deficiencies, fortunately highlighting the fact that the department's internal systems for reporting and investigating excessive force allegations are a large contributor to the problem.

If you like your police news depressing, the DOJ's report is full of handy pull quotes. Some are mere sentences while others are multi-paragraph damnations. I'm tempted to post huge chunks of the report and let them speak for themselves, but I won't. Read it for yourselves. But I don't want to let these particular paragraphs slip by without highlighting them.

First, the problems:

The pattern or practice of unreasonable force we identified is reflected in use of both deadly and less lethal force. For example, we found incidents of GDP officers firing their guns at people who do not pose an immediate threat of death or serious bodily injury to officers or others and using guns in a careless and dangerous manner, including hitting people on the head with their guns, in circumstances where deadly force is not justified. Officers also use less lethal force that is significantly out of proportion to the resistance encountered and officers too often escalate incidents with citizens instead of using effective and accepted tactics to de-escalate tension. We reviewed incidents where officers used Tasers, oleoresin capsicum spray, or punched people who were already subdued, including people in handcuffs. Many of these people could have been controlled with a lesser application of force. At times, this force appears to have been applied as punishment for the person's earlier verbal or physical resistance to an officer's command, and is not based on a current threat posed by the person. This retaliatory use of force is not legally justified. Our review also revealed that officers use excessive force against individuals who are in mental health crisis or who may be unable to understand or comply with officers' commands, including when the individual is not suspected of having committed any crime at all.

In addition to the pattern or practice of excessive force, we found that CDP officers commit tactical errors that endanger both themselves and others in the Cleveland community and, in some instances, may result in constitutional violations. They too often fire their weapons in a manner and in circumstances that place innocent bystanders in danger; and accidentally fire them, sometimes fortuitously hitting nothing and other times shooting people and seriously injuring them. CDP officers too often use dangerous and poor tactics to try to gain control of suspects, which results in the application of additional force or places others in danger. Critically, officers do not make effective use of de-escalation techniques, too often instead escalating encounters and employing force when it may not be needed and could be avoided. While these tactical errors may not always result in constitutional violations, they place officers, suspects, and other members of the Cleveland community at risk.

In short (the report spends 59 pages detailing what's briefly summed up here), these are the symptoms. The next paragraphs address the disease.

Principal among the systemic deficiencies that have resulted in the pattern or practice we found is the Division's failure to implement effective and rigorous accountability systems. The fact that we find that there are systemic failures in CDP, however, should not be interpreted as inconsistent with holding officers accountable in any particular incident. Individual CDP officers also bear responsibility for their own actions once afforded due process of law. Any effort to force a decision between systemic problems and individual accountability is nothing more than an effort to set up a false choice between two important aspects of the same broader issues that exist at CDP. Force incidents often are not properly reported, documented, investigated, or addressed with corrective measures. Supervisors throughout the chain of command endorse questionable and sometimes unlawful conduct by officers. We reviewed supervisory investigations of officers' use of force that appear to be designed from the outset to justify the officers' actions. Deeply troubling to us was that some of the specially-trained investigators who are charged with conducting unbiased reviews of officers' use of deadly force admitted to us that they conduct their investigations with the goal of casting the accused officer in the most positive light possible. This admitted bias appears deeply rooted, cuts at the heart of the accountability system at CDP...

Another critical flaw we discovered is that many of the investigators in Internal Affairs Unit advised us that they will only find that an officer violated Division policy if the evidence against the officer proves, beyond a reasonable doubt, that an officer engaged in misconduct -- an unreasonably high standard reserved for criminal prosecutions and inappropriate in this context. This standard apparently has been applied, formally or informally, for years to these investigations and further supports the finding that the accountability systems regarding use of force at CDP are structurally flawed. In actuality, we found that during the time period we reviewed that officers were only suspended for any period of time on approximately six occasions for using improper force. Discipline is so rare that no more than 51 officers out of a sworn force of 1,500 were disciplined in any fashion in connection with a use of force incident over a three-and-a-half-year period. However, when we examined discipline numbers further, it was apparent that in most of those 51 cases the actual discipline imposed was for procedural violations such as failing to file a report, charges were dismissed or deemed unfounded, or the disciplinary process was suspended due to pending civil claims. A finding of excessive force by internal disciplinary system is exceedingly rare.

The DOJ's report notes that it previously investigated the department in 2002. Remedies were set into motion at that point, but apparently lasted only long enough to remove the DOJ's oversight in 2005. With the DOJ no longer looking over its shoulder, the CPD lapsed back into its bad habits.

In the intervening years, the CPD has allowed the problem to snowball by actively ignoring its own duty to ensure its police force is indeed "Cleveland's finest," rather than a loose consortium of passable officers and outright thugs -- both granted the veneer of respectability (and a healthy dose of power) with the donning of a uniform and badge.

Other points of interest in the report:

The investigation began after helicopter video caught police kicking a handcuffed suspect in the head. No reports filed mentioned this use of force.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer performed its own investigation, uncovering the fact that officers deployed Tasers nearly 1,000 times in a 4-year period with only 5 instances being deemed "inappropriate" -- a rate a use of force expert said "strained credibility."

In 2013, an officer fired at a hostage fleeing a hostage situation, later claiming that he thought the man pointed a weapon at him. No reports corroborated this version of the incident. Fortunately, the officer missed both shots.

Despite being expressly forbidden to do so by multiple revisions to the Use of Force policy dating back to 2007, CPD officers have continued to fire weapons at suspects or vehicles moving away from them.

In 2012, an officer's weapon discharged (yes, this time the passive voice is appropriate) when he struck a suspect's head with it. The suspect escaped while "bleeding from the face," and reports filed by the officer left it unclear as to whether the suspect had been hit with the bullet as well.

A 6'4", 300-lb. officer sat on the legs of 5'8", 150-lb. shoplifting suspect and "punched him three or four times in the face," presumably as punishment for 13-year-old's kicking of an officer and the cruiser door while being placed in the vehicle.

Officers tasered a man strapped to a gurney in the back of an emergency vehicle for "threatening officers."

Five officers responding to a call concerning a suicidal man with a gun fired off 24 rounds during the incident. Four struck the suicidal man. Thirteen hit a nearby parked vehicles. And six bullets hit surrounding homes.

That the DOJ has handed down such a damning report could be viewed as encouraging, but considering it tangled with the CPD nine years ago, it's not nearly as encouraging as it should be. Bad habits are tough to break, and the CPD's habits are some of the worst. It is now on its second DOJ investigation in twelve years, and if the fixes didn't take last time, there's no logical reason to believe this time will be any different.

from the with-explanations-like-this,-who-needs-transparency? dept

The Cleveland Plain Dealer has finally issued an explanation for its takedown of a recording of its pre-endorsement interview with candidates for governor. It was originally vanished by the recording party (the Plain Dealer) and its parent company (the Northeastern Ohio Media Group) and replaced with an audio recording that couldn't capture the pure disdain and disinterest shown by the Plain Dealer's eventual endorsee, incumbent John Kasich.

It wasn't enough that the Plain Dealer removed it from its own site. It also demanded -- through Chris Quinn, the VP of Media Content -- that a site more slanted towards Kasich's opponent (Ed FitzGerald) remove the clips of the interview it had uploaded. What it looked like was a media entity reliant on First Amendment protections using its weight to deprive another journalistic outlet of the same rights. PlunderBund, the site posting the video clips, obliged this request despite having a clear fair use defense.

No one from the Plain Dealer or the Northern Ohio Media Group explained this removal. The video simply disappeared and was replaced with an audio recording. Quinn's removal demand offered no further explanation and simply asserted NOMG's claim to the entire video recording.

Diadiun says it's a post he should have written "a week ago." He offers excuses as to why he didn't, but that doesn't change the fact that someone should have addressed the removal at some point during the intervening 10 days.

Here's part one of the Official Excuse:

The contest for governor was among the last endorsement interviews the Editorial Board did. Each of the previous interviews had been reported with a story in the newspaper and online, along with an online audio file of the entire conversation.

None, however, had included video coverage, nor was that discussed with Kasich, FitzGerald or Rios. So the candidates arrived at the interview assuming that it would be conducted the same way, and that the cleveland.com post would be audio only.

When the governor's staff saw the video on cleveland.com later that day, they were chagrined, and contacted NEOMG to ask what happened.

Note that the governor's staff asked about the video in a "chagrined" fashion. Later in Diadiun's post, Chris Quinn -- the content VP demanding video removals -- says this:

He [Quinn] says no one had asked him to remove the video, but he concluded that the candidates had been unintentionally misled, and he ultimately decided fairness compelled him to take it down, which he did on Oct. 24, about 30 hours after the video was originally posted.

Quinn says that "candidates" (plural) expected an "audio-only interview" and that "fairness compelled" him to remove a video unflattering to the only candidate whose staff was "chagrined" to discover the recording. As Diadiun's column notes, opponent Ed FitzGerald's campaign posted clips of the video at his website, an act that would indicate he was fine with the recording he was never informed about.

In the interest of "fairness," Quinn made everyone take the video down, including YouTube. Diadiun calls this move "straightforward and defensible." That's very dubious. Diadiun at least calls out Quinn for his refusal to speak about this incident until now.

But then he made another decision that, in my view, was not defensible: He elected to not explain his reasons.

So when the inevitable accusations of favoritism and questions about the journalism of the decision began to arrive from readers, political junkies and media critics near and far, they were met with stony silence.

But even this admonishment is a hedge. Diadiun uses Quinn's silence to explain why he, in his position as the "reader representative," didn't write this post a week earlier when it might have meant something.

Quinn also declined to discuss his reasoning on the record with me, which put both the news organization and its reader representative in an untenable position.

This issue was the obvious topic for last week's Reader Rep column – but if Quinn wouldn't discuss his reasons with me I would be in no more knowledgeable a position than the critics who were burning up their Twitter feeds with speculation.

I would look ridiculous trying to read Quinn's mind, and would look ridiculous writing about something else – so for better or worse, I opted to follow the sage advice that it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.

So much for accountability. Quinn now claims the media group's history of transparency drove him to "break his silence." But the timing of Quinn's change of heart is no less suspicious than the motive behind the video's removal, even with the additional facts/narrative delivered by Quinn and Diadiun.

Quinn undercuts his own "fairness" narrative by (again) referring to Governor Kasich.

"My initial reaction was that the video camera was in the room, and it was obvious that we were using it," he said. "But by Friday it was grinding on me, and I decided that it would have been very easy for the governor to assume that the video camera was there for our own use, and not for publication since we hadn't discussed it.

Quinn says it was the "right thing to do" to take down the video and roam the web demanding its takedown elsewhere. But it looks more like deference to Kasich than transparency. Even the Plain Dealer's "reader representative" Ted Diadiun isn't representing much more than Chris Quinn by the time his editorial is all said and done.

Early in the article he says:

As things turned out, [the video] was worth seeing, if only for the utter disdain Kasich showed toward his Democrat opponent.

But later, while defending the takedown, he says this:

[D]eletion of the video really did not deprive readers of any important information.

Which is it? Was it "worth seeing" or was it just completely extraneous? Diadiun's explanation goes on and on, trying to be all things to all people by gently reprimanding his boss for a lack of transparency, while still trying to downplay this as just an unfortunate chain of events that started with Quinn himself failing to inform the candidates that video was being recorded.

But it still adds up to a form of suppression, one very likely prompted by the governor's "chagrin." Quinn faced no objections to the video recording from any of the other candidates, but in the interest of "fairness" he made the video disappear from any place he could find it, starting with his own paper's website. Then he refused to discuss his decision until the election was over.

The whole story is a lot of things, but "transparent" and "open" it is not.

from the your-intentions-are-bad-and-you-should-feel-bad dept

The Northeast Ohio Media Group last week posted a video of Ohio Gov. John Kasich and challenger Ed FitzGerald meeting with the editorial board, then took it down without explanation and replaced it with an audio recording.

The governor and FitzGerald shook hands before and after the interview, but that was the extent of their interaction. FitzGerald, dressed in a suit and tie, seemed to be on the edge of his seat the entire time, eager to land a punch whenever possible. Kasich, open collar, sans tie, often slouched while using a second chair's armrest for extra comfort...

FitzGerald tried repeatedly to draw Kasich into a one-on-one debate. Each time, Kasich refused to take the bait. When FitzGerald turned to his left to try and catch Kasich's eye, the governor stared straight ahead or off to his other side…

Kasich declined to answer any question that FitzGerald posed directly. He only would answer when an editor or reporter in the room repeated FitzGerald's question.

The closest thing Ohioans got to a televised debate in this year’s race for Ohio governor was a video posted by the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The PD recorded their joint editorial board interview with John Kasich, Ed FitzGerald and Green Party Candidate Anita Rios and posted it online.

In the video, we got to see FitzGerald fired-up and on message while Kasich slumped in his chair, refused to acknowledge the other candidates and ignored repeated attempts by PD staff to answer even basic questions about his policies and programs.

You have posted on your web site our copyrighted video of an endorsement interview in the Ohio governor’s race. You have not asked for, and we have not granted, the rights to use our property, which was illegally copied from our website.

We insist you delete the material immediately. We have registered the copyright, which means your illegal use of it entitles us to statutory damages, which can be quite steep, and recovery of all fees we pay our attorneys as we compel you to adhere to the copyright law.

We protect our copyrighted material with great vigor. You have posted it illegally. We expect immediate action in removing the video from your site.

PlunderBund clearly has a solid fair use defense, but it really doesn't matter at the moment. The site has taken down the video. If that were the end of the story, it would still be highly questionable and a seriously misguided attempt at "protecting" the Cleveland Plain Dealer's intellectual property.

But that's not the end of it. The Cleveland Plain Dealer has taken down the video it created and replaced it with an audio recording. [Here's an archive.org capture that contains the now-removed references to the CPD's video recordings.] Why would it remove its own video? If PlunderBund's account of the video's content is accurate, John Kasich's behavior during this session bordered on the insolently childish. Watching a politicial candidate exude boredom and disdain is hundreds of times more effective (and potentially damaging) than hearing it. An audio version of this "interview" is a defanged version.

But that's probably the way the CPD and its parent media group want it. After all, the Plain Dealer endorsed Kasich in 2010 and again shortly after Kasich's petulant, barely-there appearance at the NOMG-hosted endorsement interview. If you're looking for a reason why the video is gone and only the audio remains, that seems like a good place to begin. It also seems likely that's why the "VP of Content" is cleansing the web with mostly baseless legal threats.

There's nothing more hypocritical than a media group that thrives on First Amendment protections acting like a censorious thug in order to protect its own access and interests. The editorial board endorsed a candidate who spent most of his allotted time acting like a sullen teenager enduring a family vacation and now it doesn't want anyone to see its anointed pick in all his disinterested "glory." That's pathetic.

from the 90-of-which-failed-to-find-their-targets dept

Late last year, we discussed an investigation of several Cleveland police officers after a high-speed pursuit involving over 60 squad cars and 100 officers culminated in officers unloading 137 bullets in the direction of the stopped vehicle -- 47 of which found homes in the two suspects, who were both killed. One officer -- Michael Brelo -- fired 49 rounds in a little over 20 seconds.

In all, the investigation by the state found that 64 officers violated orders, but none of these officers received anything longer than a 10-day suspension. Two supervisors were demoted and one was fired.

This whole debacle was set off by a couple of perception errors. Some officers thought they heard a gunshot and others thought an officer had been injured. This was all the "evidence" the officers needed to justify mounting a by-any-means-necessary takedown of the two suspects. 137 bullets later, the officers searched the vehicle, recovering exactly zero weapons, bullets or casings.

Nearly eight months later, a grand jury has returned charges against six of the officers. Five of the officers -- all supervisors -- are facing misdemeanor charges of dereliction of duty. Officer Brelo, the cop who single handedly delivered over a third of the 137 bullets, will be facing something more severe.

The Cuyahoga County Grand Jury today voted to indict Cleveland Police Patrol Officer Michael Brelo on two counts of Manslaughter for the killing of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams on November 29, 2012.

Under Ohio Revised Code Section 2903.03, Manslaughter is a felony of the first degree, carrying a mandatory prison sentence of from three to 11 years.

The prosecutor's statement further details Brelo's actions.

After more than 100 shots were fired at Mr. Russell's car, it was trapped by police cruisers in a narrow lane and came to a full stop.

All officers at the scene saw fit to cease fire.

Then Officer Brelo started shooting again and fired at least 15 shots, including fatal shots, downward through the windshield into the victims at close range as he stood on the hood of Mr. Russell's car.

You can see Brelo's "heroics" in the State Attorney General's computerized "reenactment," based on evidence gathered. Starting about the 1:00 mark, you can see Brelo move closer to the suspects' vehicle (and across a squad car, apparently), before finally standing directly on the hood and firing down through the suspects' windshield.

The state prosecutor notes that the Supreme Court recently upheld the right of police officers to use deadly (read [in most cases]: "excessive") force to end pursuits that possibly endanger officers or citizens. (More on that here.) But he points out that this situation was not one of those.

The law does not allow for a stop-and-shoot...

Let's be clear what happened here:

The driver was fully stopped. Escape was no longer even a remote possibility. The flight was over. The public was no longer in danger because the car was surrounded by police cars and 23 police officers in a schoolyard safely removed from pedestrians and traffic.

The primary danger facing the police at this time was from themselves, if they continued to shoot at each other in the circular firing squad they had inadvertently formed.

After the ceasefire, Officer Brelo unleashed an unlawful, second barrage of shots.

The ultimate legal issue is whether the police officer was justified when he stood on the hood of Mr. Russell's car and emptied his clip into the occupants after the chance of flight was completely eliminated and they no longer presented a threat to the public's safety.

He was not.

The statement also calls out the dereliction of duty by police supervisors, who allowed a petty criminal to dictate the actions of a large percentage of Cleveland's police force that night, rather than seizing control of the situation themselves. The officers themselves aren't blameless, even those who didn't contribute to the hail of gunfire. Based on little more than a sound heard by a couple of officers (which may have been a backfire), dozens of cops bought into a narrative that armed and dangerous suspects were on the loose and may have (no one seemed to have been interested in confirming this) injured an officer.

The prosecutor notes the grand jury no-billed murder charges against Officer Brelo. Murder charges would be excessive, but manslaughter completely undersells Brelo's actions. After all, the vehicle was barricaded and every officer had ceased fire before he jumped up on the hood and ensured the two suspects were completely dead by unloading his weapon at point-blank range through the windshield.

Also noted by the prosecutor is the difficulty investigators had reconstructing the events, thanks to the Cleveland Police Department's lack of dashcams. Why these are still missing from its vehicles after decades of near-universal use by police departments nationwide is a true mystery, especially considering this fact:

The cost of investigating this shooting by the Attorney General, the Cleveland Police Department and the Grand Jury will exceed the cost of purchasing dash cams.

There's no conceivable reason for any law enforcement agency to be lacking this equipment. The only reasons verge on inconceivable, most of which can be traced back to a reluctance to be held accountable.

from the most-massive-wrist-slap-to-date dept

A year-long review of a police shooting in Cleveland has finally concluded. The investigation stems from a police pursuit late last year that resulted in the deaths of both suspects in the vehicle, who were at the receiving end of 137 bullets fired by Cleveland police officers.

A state investigation previously concluded there was a systemic problem of an attitude of "refusal to look at the facts," and handed the case over the prosecutors. In August, East Cleveland's mayor said prosecutors were considering filing charges against the cops involved in the shooting, but as of this month the shooting is still being investigated.

Both suspects were killed by the barrage of gunfire. The driver, Timothy Russell, was shot 23 times. His passenger, Malissa Williams, was shot 24 times. No weapons or casings were found inside the vehicle.

The chase began when an officer thought he heard gunfire coming from the Russell's car. Another witness on the scene thought it may have just been the vehicle backfiring. Either way, it led to a 23-minute chase involving five dozen police vehicles and nearly 100 officers and supervisors. Both suspects had criminal records, which may have influenced their decision to flee.

The pursuing police were ordered to stop by their supervisors but overrode this decision because they thought a police officer had been wounded. In order to right this perceived wrong, officers chased Russell at speeds of up to 120 mph before stopping him in a middle school parking lot. Thirteen officers then fired 137 shots, a majority of them in just over 20 seconds.

An initial review of the chase found 75 patrol officers violated orders, but the disciplinary hearings reduced that number to 64 officers. All but one received a suspension, with the longest being 10 days, McGrath said.

None of the violations was so serious it warranted termination. Some of the officers received a written warning.

Police previously announced punishments for 12 supervisors stemming from the chase. One sergeant was fired. A captain and lieutenant were demoted, and nine sergeants were suspended.

Additional charges most likely await the thirteen officers who fired 137 shots into a single vehicle, including one officer who managed to squeeze off 49 rounds in less than 20 seconds. The DOJ's investigation also hangs overhead, but it could be another year or two before it reaches any conclusions. What's been handed down so far barely amounts to a slap on the wrist for the 63 officers being punished. The maximum suspension is only 10 days. Their supervisors appear to have fared worse, with one firing and two demotions.

The police officers' union has (of course) defended the actions of the thirteen shooters.

The union has said the shootings were justified because the driver tried to ram an officer.

One wonders if the union feels every bullet fired was "justified" or just the 47 kill shots. One also wonders how many stray shots (with only about a third of the shots hitting the targets) went wandering into the nearby neighborhood. The state AG's animated reconstruction (above) indicates some remedial gun safety training might be wise, as the officers form (more than once) a semi-circle, firing shots in the direction of each other. (That this hail of gunfire took place at night made it even more dangerous for everyone involved.)

For the rank-and-file, the punishments being handed down are too light to discourage insubordination and unsafe pursuits in the future. For some cops, ignoring supervisors' orders in order to "avenge" one of their own is always justified and any resulting punishments are worn as badges of honor. But make no mistake, this pursuit wasn't about justice or any higher duty. It was a squad of officers looking to extract revenge as self-appointed judges, jurors and executioners. Nothing else explains the massive number of shots fired or the dozens of officers facing (minimal) suspensions for directly disobeying orders.

from the good-luck-there dept

Every time you think that there have been enough examples of the Streisand Effect that it should stop people from trying to censor perfectly legitimate content, you're just setting yourself up to be surprised by the next such attempt -- often more bizarre than the previous one. The latest one comes to us via the Consumerist, and it involves the story of a new gym in Cleveland, called BarreCleveland, that has apparently threatened to call the police on a blogger because she though the price was a bit steep. But the really odd thing? The original post was generally positive. We're used to seeing people flip out about people saying negative things about them, but a mostly positive review? Now that's something special.

Alana Munro's original blog post did discuss the fact that she thought the price was too high, and that she normally likes a workout that generates more of a sweat, but on the whole it doesn't seem that negative at all. She noted that if it was a little closer to where she lived (and the prices were lower) she'd likely go back. However, somewhere along the way that got interpreted as being a dig by someone who ran the place, and they first got into a bit of a Facebook and Twitter argument with Alana and some others.

Just stop the posting about Barre Cleveland and take down all the existing posts. We know that you stole the class and we can pursue legal action against you for that and that is why it is ridiculous that you complain about a price when you never paid for the class. You were never given a discount code by Barre Cleveland and somehow you used that to enter the studio. I am sending you this message to politely ask that you remove all the content about Barre Cleveland from your blog and twitter and we will not get the Beachwood Police involved on this theft of services.

Alana says she did use a discount code -- it was one that was being passed around widely to help promote the gym in the first place. Now the gym may argue that it only meant the code to be used by people it gave it too, but then it should have implemented one-time codes. Instead, the code worked, and Alana has a nice receipt posted to her blog "thanking" her for signing up. Her complaint wasn't that she paid too much for that one class, but that the general price might be too much for her to keep going back.

Either way, the whole thing has blown up and received lots of attention. BarreCleveland has scrubbed the back-and-forth tweets from its Twitter feed. But it certainly looks like it already went way too far. Engaging with people who criticize you online is one thing -- and can be quite useful. Threatening to call the police on them and demanding they erase what they've written about you is going way too far, and the internet (hello Streisand Effect) doesn't take kindly to such things.

from the rfid-me dept

Reader Stan alerted us to a recent report out of Cleveland, where the city will apparently be placing RFID chips in recycling bins to monitor whether or not you've been a good little earth saver lately. The way it works, apparently, is that the system will monitor whether or not you bring your recycling bin to the curb, and if you haven't in a while, "a trash supervisor will sort through the trash for recyclables" on the assumption that if you're not recycling, you're probably throwing stuff out. After checking those trash cans for recyclables, if more than 10 percent recyclable material is found, a $100 fine could be assessed to the home owner.

Not surprisingly, the reasoning for this has a lot more to do with money than saving the earth's resources:

Recycling is good for the environment and the city's bottom line, officials said. Cleveland pays $30 a ton to dump garbage in landfills, but earns $26 a ton for recyclables.

While perhaps it's a good thing to see something "good" like recycling line up with a way for the city to earn extra money, it still seems pretty intrusive to monitor how often people recycle.